Current Lab Members

Arpita graduated from Creighton University School of Medicine with a PhD in Immunology. She investigated the phenotype of dendritic cells in the lungs after treatment of bronchial asthma with Flt3 ligand. Arpita worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Mt. Sinai Medical Center where her research involved identifying mechanisms that result in factor IX tolerance following gene therapy with adeno-associated viral serotype-1 vector. In her second postdoctoral fellowship, in the laboratory of Justine Smith at Oregon Health & Science University, she studied the role of immune cells in the inflammation of the eyes. She joined the Baconguis lab in February 2014 to work on the structure and function of sodium channels.

Sigrid graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Physics from University of Oslo in 2014. She spent one year of her undergraduate studies as an exchange student at the University of Oregon where she took classes and worked in the Parthasarathy lab. She assisted a graduate student in his research project that involved calculating the rigidity of biological membranes using light sheet fluorescence imaging. Sigrid joined the Baconguis lab June 2015 as a PhD student and will be focusing her research on the function and structure of sodium channels.

Rich earned his BA in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology just across the river at Reed College in 2015. He spent two years working on ion channel structure-function in Matt Whorton's lab at the Vollum Institute as a research assistant. Rich then joined OHSU's Program in Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (PMCB) in 2017 and the Baconguis lab in April 2018 to study the structure of ENaC in complex with regulatory proteins. When he's not in lab he can be found riding his bike or playing with his cat, Nooch.